


Siren

by Coldest_Fire



Series: And dream I do [1]
Category: The Book of Mormon - Parker/Stone/Lopez
Genre: "I thought about us on a deserted island" but as a fic, Canon compliant? Ish?, Friends to Lovers, Gay Elder McKinley, Gay Steve Blade, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Pre-Canon, Prophetic Dreams, Religious Conversion therapy, Steve is a merman in these dreams, Suicidal Thoughts, author is a lesbian and is done with homophobia but unfortunately here it is, dream scene, let me know if theres any other things I should tag, merman steve, possible happy ending, reconnecting with his best friend, religious homophobia, starts with another dream sequence, vaguely soulmate ish, will add warnings as they go
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 12:47:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15751959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coldest_Fire/pseuds/Coldest_Fire
Summary: He would always know those eyes, the colour of the sea by the night.McKinley dreams about Steve for the first night since he was ten, and now he's sixteen the night before his first day of school. When he arrives, he sees the boy he's always been helpless but to love. Can he balance his religion and his love, or will one be torn away from him?





	Siren

**Author's Note:**

> Greetings! This is vaguely int he same universe as Spooky Mormon Heaven, in that the dream works about the same way. I will add warnings every chapter, but theres going to be a dream every few chapters, and that will predict the events of the next few chapters. Wasrnings for religious conversion therapy, which I have researched a fair bit for the way I write Mckinley. He was taught to turn it off. 
> 
> hope you all enjoy!!

Moonlight beat down on his body, silver and white sand looks like snow, painted silver by the moon as he stepped out of the brush, the branches of the trees seeming to reach for him, wanting to tug him into darkness but Connor was desperate to be in the light, to believe he even could be. The sand was soft, like flour between his toes, white, pure, and he walked out across it from the dark, thorn brush that still seemed to reach for him. His shadow marred the perfect white expanse, but rather than look at it, acknowledge that he was ruining this part of creation, that he ought to go back into the darkness he came from, Connor looked up to the sky. It was an inky indigo, freckled with silver, pierced by the moon. The silver light of the moon cut through all the darkness, and everything his therapist told him he was supposed to burn off in this holy light.

He threw his arms wide, and invited it in, gasping in a breath of the salty sea air. He stood, breathing in deeply, eyes screwed shut, waiting for the death to come, waiting to burn up, like sinners and deviants were supposed to in this holy light. He knew they were never going to cure him, not when his dreams were always of his perversion, of his sin. Even faced with Hell, he couldn’t stop the lust, couldn’t stop himself from kissing, even touching other men. The fires that burned around him always paled to the ones that burned within him. “I can’t get better,” he spoke aloud to the light, as though it was not gentle moonlight, but an interrogation light burning into his retinas. “It’s too deep. I need it too badly. I’m terminal,” he spoke slowly, the confession flooding out of him. “It’s not enough to just not do it, you can’t think it, can’t want it, and I can’t stop the thoughts. I can’t stop the dreams.” He fell to his knees, arms still spread, eyes still shut, “I can’t get cured, I can’t want what I need to. I’m carrying the fires of Hell inside me, and gosh, they burn.”

And for a moment, he was sure he was going to burn up there, tears streaming down his face, just as the therapist assured him he would if they didn’t get him cured, even when sometimes he felt like his cure was killing him. But if it had to kill him to cure him, and bring out something that wasn’t him inside his body, if that was the will of the father, he wished it could all happen here, as he blubbered pathetically in a shroud of moonlight. “I can’t put out the fire,” he whimpered, voice catching as he lay back into the sand, spreading out like a starfish, allowing the light to touch all of him. “Please, Please just put it out, or let it burn me out, I can’t take this,” he prayed, sobs ripping their way through his lungs. 

It was as though the moonlight moved off of him, as though his father in Heaven would no longer even look on him, as a cloud passed before the moon, and he opened his eyes, seeing the water was now in the silvery light, deep and blue black as his soul, breaking and lapping at the shores. It rippled like the mosaic glass, catching moonlight the same as glass would, blue and black and silver. He knew the only place he’d seen this colour before was in the eyes of the boy he’d nearly taken to Hell with him. 

End where all the sin began, he thought, realizing the moonlight was showing him where to be. Maybe Heavenly Father thought water would put out the fire, or maybe it was Connor he wanted extinguished. He walked slowly out to the water, letting the waves lap at his ankles, the water neither cold or warm, the same temperature as the surface of his skin, as he walked in slowly, apathetically. Did he have to drown to absolve himself of who he’d become, or would that be a bigger sin, to take his life? He knew when another of the boys in his therapy group did it, the therapist had condemned him, said that he gave in to the sin, that taking his life was selfish, and it protected the devil’s whims that he’d given his life to. 

It felt like Heavenly Father was leading him into the water, so he wasn’t sure if this was one final sin, or repentance. He just followed the moonlight, entering the water, until it almost went up to his lips, tilting his face back to breathe, stopping beneath the moon, and closing his eyes, watching a dark shape dart closer. Fear surged through him, but he didn’t dare move out from under the moon, didn’t dare disappoint his Father, even if it mean being eaten. 

Something powerful and slimy barrelled under him, and he screamed as his feet slide out from under him, and he gulped in a mouthful of the dark water. As he coughed, thrashed and spewed. He watched a pair of pale hands take his arms, and then a man surface. His head broke the surface of the water, as he flipped back a head of long blue-black hair. His tail, beneath the water had a fin that looked like a crown tail betta, sort of folded and spiked, all his scales up his tail, and around a couple of fins on his arms the same deep blue as the sky, navy almost, catching the moon’s silver skin. 

His skin looked as though the moonlight had poured into one boy, and his eyes were the waiting sky, alit with the sky, as his pale lips curled into a smile. McKinley’s eyes roamed his muscled chest, long and limber like a swimmer, and he eventually rested his hands against it, as he recognized the eyes, he always would know those eyes. 

“Steve?” He gasped softly, clutching the man’s shoulders, wondering why, after years, he had to see hum, had to remember what he could never again see, for Steve’s case, unless his curse was contagious. Steve was quarantined away from him, but in these moments he was so close, McKinley could feel the heat of his body, addictive. He buried his face in Steve’s shoulder, biting back a sob, that Heavenly Father had reunited him with his best friend in a dream, but also cautious, knowing this was probably a test, to see if he could hold himself back from kissing him. 

He gasped in a breath of salty, wet, humid air, breathing out the boy’s name, as Steve pulled back to look at him for a moment, and nearly pressed their lips together. McKinley, entranced, didn’t pull back, face so close to his that he felt Steve’s breath as the merman spoke practically against them. “I’m waiting for you, Connor,” he spoke solemnly, “come and find me.” And the moonlight on his eyes shone bright, so bright McKinley could forget, if only for a moment, what a sin it was that their lips were so close.


End file.
